Miami-based performance artist Orestes de la Paz has put his heart, soul and fat into 20 bars of special soap made with his liposuctioned blubber. The bars of human soap are available for purchase and priced at $1,000.

Orestes de la Paz underwent a liposuction procedure in December of last year, and decided to turn the removed fat into soap to prevent it from going rancid. He came up with the idea for his  art thesis after realizing that “clients are willing to try anything to feel and look beautiful, even to the extent of buying products with human elements in them (stem cells, placenta, semen; you name it, it’s out there.)” Working as a hairstylist and make-up artist, Orestes loves combining the worlds of art and beauty together, so the unusual project sort of made sense to him. Apart from coconut oil, organic vegetable shortening, lavender and tree tea oils, as well as other cosmetics ingredients, his unique soap bars are 25% human fat, which apparently leaves the user’s hands soft after washing. “There’s always a certain amount of blood, sweat, and tears that goes into any artwork. I just make it more explicit,” the artist said about his bizarre project.

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You thought your boss was bad? He’s probably a nice guy compared to the boss of this cosmetics company in Chongqing, China, who recently forced his employees to crawl on their hands and feet in the city’s busy commercial district, in front of hundreds of onlookers.

The controversial event took place on May 2nd, and broadcast live on many Chinese users’ microblog accounts. Later, photos taken by bystanders showing the humiliated employees crawling on their knees with their heads facing the pavement were posted online, causing even more outrage. Some people even notified the police, who showed up on scene and cleared the area. It turns out it was all just a drill ordered by the company boss, who wanted to test his workers’ resistance to pressure. And what better way to do that than have them crawl like dogs in front of strangers taking photos and laughing at them, right? Most likely, he wanted to see how much humiliation his employees were able to bear, so he could exploit them to the maximum without them quitting. If something like this happened in a Western country, the boss would probably be taken to jail or at least sued for damages, but according to Chinese media reports, all the police did in this case was “criticize” and “educate” the cosmetic company’s leadership. Inhumane working conditions all over China have been reported in the past, but this is just borderline slavery.

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David Gracer is an entomophagist, which means he consumes insects for sustenance and flavor. During the last 11 years, he claims he has munched on countless creepy crawlies from 5,000 different species.

Eating bugs may seem disgusting to a lot of people, but mankind has been doing it for most of its existence. The Greeks and the Romans loved them, and many cultures throughout Asia, Africa and the Americas actually raise insects for food or gather them through foraging. It is estimated over half the world’s population regularly feasts on a variety of flying and crawling bugs, and entomophagy experts advocate that they are almost as nutritious as beef, contain considerably less fat and have a low impact on the environment. 47-year-old David Gracer, from Providence, Rhode island has been living on bugs since 2001, while trying to convince others that it’s the sustainable way to go. His basement freezer is constantly packed with over 12,000 insects from 20 different species, but the convinced enthomophagist claims he has eaten over 5,000 kinds of bugs during the last 11 years. He consumes them sautéed, filleted and roasted, and says he is working hard on making insects taste more appealing.

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If you’re going to get a tattoo, why not go for something truly beautiful instead of the usual tribal, heart, dragon or those tacky Chinese characters that people seem to love so much. Five years ago, French tattoo master Xoïl aka Loïc adopted a new artsy style called the “Photoshop Style”, which really gives “skin art” a whole new meaning.

Xoïl was born in a very small village in Southern France, where his father worked as a mason, creating beautiful things out of stuff other people just threw away. Watching his father at work inspired him to leave the rural life behind and start making cool stuff himself. He never had a formal apprenticeship under a tattoo artist, because they all had these “old-school crazy ideas” he just didn’t recognize at the time, so he simply hung out at tattoo shops picking up the basics and developing his unique style. And it shows in his current artworks. Xoïl’s style is so distinct from other skin artists’ that you can recognize one of his pieces on sight. Combining clients’ ideas with stamp-like textures, typewriter-inspired fonts and geometric patterns, the French master creates incredibly beautiful works of permanent body art that have caught the attention of tattoo enthusiasts around Europe and the US.

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For the last eight years Puerto Rico native Eliel Santos has been making a living by reeling in jewelry, cash and electronics from beneath New York City’s sidewalk grates. It may not seem like a very profitable trade, but on great days he can earn over $1,000.

38-year-old Eliel Santos lives in the Bronx, but he spends every day of the week visiting various areas of the Big Apple and using dental floss and mouse trap glue to retrieve whatever valuable items people drop through the sidewalk grates. The urban treasure hunter spends most of his time looking down through the small metal holes hoping to spot something worth pawning. Whenever something grabs his attention, Eliel positions himself over the target and pulls out his trusty tools – a line of dental floss attached to different size weights covered in mouse glue. With expert precision, he lowers his sticky lure through the grating into the darkness below and quickly catches his “prey”. Sometimes it’s just quarters or useless shiny objects, but a lot of times Santos walks away with precious jewelry, cash and even trendy gadgets like iPhones or iPods. “If you drop it, I’m going to pick it up — so be careful,” he warns the pedestrians of New York.

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Take tens of thousands of children, place them in the largest stadium in the world, arm them with giant colored flip-books containing hundreds of colored panels, train them to move in perfect unison and you get the awe-inspiring human mosaics of the Arirang Mass Games, in North Korea.

The Arirang Festival Mass Games held in Pyongyang, are the largest and most impressive exercise of state propaganda in the world. The event runs from August to October, and offers an incredible spectacle of perfectly choreographed gymnastics, dancing, singing, and of course, praising the achievements of the communist nations’s eternal leader Kim Il-Sung.  The games aren’t held every year. They are suspended in case of national emergencies, like when flooding ravages the country and the Government decides the hundreds of thousands of performers are better put to use repairing the destroyed infrastructure. But when the trained human pixels get the chance to perform on Rungrado May Day Stadium, in front of a crowd of 150,000 people, they make the performers of the 2008 Beijing Olympics opening ceremony look like a group of children staging a simple school play. Every 20 seconds for a period of two hours they switch the panels of their flip-books to create stunning mosaics honoring Korea’s cultural heritage and its political regime.

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Curious to know what other people who have spent the same number of days on Earth as him have achieved, English writer Richard Avis is traveling around the world looking for individuals who share his birthday.

Were you born on December 1st, 1974? Than you just might be on Richard Avis’ to-visit list. The oddball English writer has embarked on a journey to meet 40 of his “time twins” in different locations around the world and put his experiences down on paper for his new book. “I was not alone in being born on that day.  Families across the world celebrated their new additions on that day 38 years ago,” Richard writes on his website. “But what kinds of lives have these people lived?  With the same length of time on this planet as me, what have they achieved?  What have been their greatest achievements; and what are their burning ambitions?  Do they see themselves as young, middle aged or old?  Have they achieved their defining moment, or is that still to come? Are they married with children, or single, backpacking round the world?  Are they successful – and how is this judged?  How have their lives been affected by the accident of geography that led them to be born where they were?  Is our age a defining similarity, or does the concept of age change from country to country?” These are the questions he’s trying to find answers to through his unique Time Twins project.

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A passionate Iron Man fan from the United Kingdom spent hundreds of hours creating a realistic-looking suit of the Marvel superhero from Eva foam, wood and other recycled items. Did I mention he’s only 17?

Reddit user Mafferick was so impressed with his 17-year-old friend’s home-made Iron Man costume that he decided to share it with the community. DIY fans obviously had a lot of questions about the materials he used and the time he spent working on it, so he gave the young creator the chance to reply via his account. It turns out the guy is a big fan or Iron Man, and he also likes making stuff, so this awesome wearable suit is a combination of two of his greatest passions. He used “lots and lots of foam, wood and various recycled bits and bobs (the boots are some old shoes with the cushions from some old roller blades to make them wearable)”, and spent “a few weeks if you add the hours together” sculpting all the various parts and making them look as realistic as possible. The rudimentary tools used to make this impressive piece of equipment include an industrial knife, a dremel, sandpaper and over 100 extra sharp blades for cutting the Eva foam. He painted the whole thing with automotive spray paint and now plans to give it a “damaged” effect. The price tag – around $540 worth of materials and a great deal of time.

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A heartbreaking video that recently went viral on YouTube shows a heartbroken wolf-dog laying over the gravestone of his owner’s grandmother,shaking and making what appear to be sobbing noises.

Over the years I’ve posted some truly heartbreaking stories about dogs displaying their feelings over the loss of their masters, pets waiting by their owner’s graves for years, or visiting familiar places and awaiting their return, but I had yet to see an animal actually crying over their deceased human companions…Until today. In a short clip posted on YouTube by user Sarahvarley13, Wiley, a wolf-dog from Lockwood Animal Rescue Center (LARC), in Ventura County, California, appears to be sobbing over the loss of his owner’s grandmother. He is shown laying on her gravestone shaking and making heartbreaking noises that a lot of people believe express his pain over the terrible loss. The video has sparked a debate between YouTube users who believe Wiley is sobbing over his friend Gladys, and those who are convinced dogs cannot cry and that the wolf-dog is actually suffering from allergies or breathing problems.

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How do you keep the fun going at fairs in a country affected by frequent power cuts and blackouts? Simple, just hire a bunch of workers to dangle from the bars of manual ferris wheels to keep it in motion.

India’s human-powered ferris wheels recently made headlines in Western media after a video of one such contraption at a fun fair in New Delhi went viral on YouTube and various news sharing sites, but the truth is the phenomenon is very common in Asian countries where electricity is unreliable. Some fairs use generators or even car batteries to power ferris wheels, but the simplest and most cost-effective way to keep people entertained is to hire a couple of daredevils to climb a manual ferris wheel and dangle from its metal bars to keep it spinning. The simple installations are made up of a simple metal frame and a few open-air cages, and without a power source they look like non-functional decorations when not in use. But as soon as people climb in the cages and the fearless wallahs start working their magic, you get pretty much the same feeling as you would from a modern ferris wheel.

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Have you ever dreamed of having a home in the middle of nowhere to escape to every now and then? I have. And this house built straight in the middle of the Drina River in Serbia fits the bill perfectly.

Standing on an exposed rock bang in the center of the river, near the town of Bajina Basta, this tiny house has been getting a lot of attention on the internet ever since it was captured on camera last year by Hungarian photographer Irene Becker. Her photo was published by National Geographic as one of the best ‘Photos of the Day’ in August 2012, and ever since then the mysterious and tranquil abode of Drina River has captured the imagination of millions. “I’m so glad that my picture makes this tiny house known to more and more people,” Becker said about her work. But in Serbia, the precariously placed house has been a popular tourist destination for decades, and a symbol of the picturesque Basta region. It was even nominated as one of the Seven Wonders of Serbia.

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Australian fashion designer Stephanie Wilson married her high-school sweetheart in a unique dress made from 100,000 plastic bread tags she had collected over the last 10 years.

Stephanie Wilson and Will Wapling met and became friends while attending Belmont High School in Geelong. After completing Year 12, the two became a couple and moved in together. Stephanie remembers there was a pile of bread tags on the window sill of their home which they kept adding to. She and Will used to joke that when there were enough tags to make a wedding dress they would get married. It may have been a joke to them, but as soon as people found out about their plan they started collecting bread tags and giving them to the lovebirds. At one point, they were getting so many that Stephanie had to get bigger jars to store them in. Then, 10 years later, they realized their idea wasn’t so crazy after all, and decided to go through with it. Having dozens of jars full of plastic tags sitting in their home, Stephanie and Will were sure they had enough bread tags to make the dress. It turned out they were wrong, but luckily the groom-to-be had a baker cousin who came to the rescue with rolls of fresh tags.

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Rob Rhinehart, a 24-year-old software engineer from Atlanta, has been living on a liquid diet for the past three months and says he has never felt better. He has combined all the nutrients he needs in a shake-like drink named Soylent which allegedly contains just a third of the calories and no toxins or cancer-causing substances.

You might be tempted to believe that Rob switched from solid foods to Soylent to lose weight, but that’s only one of his reasons. After realizing he was spending around 2 hours every day cooking food, the young software engineer decided something had to be done to make eating and all the work it involves less time-consuming. Conventional food was also affecting his finances and physical strength, so being the experimental person he is he started looking for a better alternative to common food. Reading biology books made him think that the cells of the human body don’t really know the difference between nutrients from a carrot and those from a powder, so he started scouring the Internet for every essential nutrient in powdered form. Soon, his kitchen looked more like a chemistry lab in which he experimented with various quantities of powders until he found the mix that worked for him. For the past three months he has lived on Soylent alone, and says he has noticed a massive boost to my focus, stamina, physique, and free time.

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Christians make up only 1.4% of Japan’s 127 million population, but Western “white weddings” now account for around three quarters of all bridal ceremonies, which means Christian priests are in high demand. To meet their clients’ expectations bridal companies have given up on trying to find ordained ministers and have kept requirements to a minimal – men looking foreign-enough to pass as Christians who can speak a little Japanese and perform the ceremony in 20 minutes.

Japan’s love affair with Christian wedding is believed to have started in the 1980s with the televised weddings of Prince Charles and Lady Diana and was fueled by the nuptials of Japanese pop star Momoe Yamaguchi. People, women especially, were attracted by the idea of celebrating their marriage through a ritual that revolved around love and that elevates the bride to the status of princess even for a short while. Traditional Shinto weddings, on the other hand, encase women in a wig and kimono, and are focused more on the merger of two families. The Japanese simply  fell in love with the sharp dress code, the kiss and the overall image of Western weddings over their centuries-old traditions. But in order to have a genuine-looking ceremony, they wanted Christian priests, which were pretty hard to find. That started the now famous “foreign fake pastors” trend that saw companies and hotels hiring average foreign gentlemen with minimal knowledge of the Japanese language to perform Christian weddings.

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The tiny coqui frog may seem harmless, but as night falls over the islands of Hawaii, thousands of these coin-sized critters start terrorizing the local population with their unrelenting mating calls that can reach up to 90 decibels. Luckily, frog whisperer Keevin Meenami speaks their language and can draw the females out when they become to much to bear.

“ko-KEE-ko-KEE-ko-KEE” – that’s the sound that has disrupted countless hours of sleep and scared away both potential home buyers and tourists from several parts of the Hawaiian archipelago, including the Big Island. Originally from Puerto Rico, the tiny coqui frogs have been arriving to Hawaii as cargo-ship stowaways ever since the late 1980s. With no natural predators to trouble them, they have been multiplying rapidly, eluding eradication crews by camouflaging themselves with a brown or yellow coloring that blends into Hawaiian vegetation.  In 2004, authorities declared war on the coqui and came up with several plans to wipe them out them from the Big island, which had become their headquarters of sorts, and from where they constantly escaped to neighboring islands. They tried just about everything, but in 2010 they announced nothing could be done to get rid of or even contain the coqui population. These days county, state and private groups are doing everything in their power to prevent the invasive frogs from taking over Oahu, Hawaii’s most populated island. Every time there’s a report of coqui chirping anywhere on the island, intervention teams are deployed to localize and neutralize the threat. Most times the frogs are whacked on the spot, but one man has come up with a non-violent way of dealing with the frogs – he just talks to them.

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